Education Gains Attributable to Fertility Decline: Patterns by Gender, Period, and Country in Latin America and Asia

Jing Li (), William Dow and Luis Rosero-Bixby ()
Additional contact information
Jing Li: Weill Cornell Medical College
Luis Rosero-Bixby: Universidad de Costa Rica

Demography, 2017, vol. 54, issue 4, No 6, 1353-1373

Abstract: Abstract We investigate the heterogeneity across countries and time in the relationship between mother’s fertility and children’s educational attainment—the quantity-quality (Q-Q) trade-off—by using census data from 17 countries in Asia and Latin America, with data from each country spanning multiple census years. For each country-year, we estimate micro-level instrumental variables models predicting secondary school attainment using number of siblings of the child, instrumented by the sex composition of the first two births in the family. We then analyze correlates of Q-Q trade-off patterns across countries. On average, one additional sibling in the family reduces the probability of secondary education by 6 percentage points for girls and 4 percentage points for boys. This Q-Q trade-off is significantly associated with the level of son preference, slightly decreasing over time and with fertility, but it does not significantly differ by educational level of the country.

Keywords: Quantity-quality trade-off; Fertility and education; Cross-country comparison; Instrumental variables; Heterogeneous effects (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s13524-017-0585-z Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:demogr:v:54:y:2017:i:4:d:10.1007_s13524-017-0585-z

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/13524

DOI: 10.1007/s13524-017-0585-z

Access Statistics for this article

Demography is currently edited by John D. Iceland, Stephen A. Matthews and Jenny Van Hook

More articles in Demography from Springer, Population Association of America (PAA)
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().